Gilgamesh Immortal (Chronicles of the Nephilim) (22 page)

Gilgamesh did not know how long he was in the precious garden. He lost track of time. Was it days or weeks? His strength revived. The pain in his bruised leg seeped away. His beard had grown back. But he knew he had to leave. As much as he could have stayed here forever, it would ultimately become a false paradise, a temporary respite of pleasure before an eternity of pain.

But what awakened him from his
blissful slumber was not an innate righteousness or wisdom. It was the fact that he became aware that someone or some
thing
was watching him.

It
was not human, that much he knew. Humans had a distinct presence unlike animals or gods. They were simpler and less aware of their own embeddedness within their environment. They were sloppier in their movements and their smell was more sour than animals, probably because of their consumption of milk and cheese products made from goat and bovine milk. This one smelled more like barley.

He first noticed his visitor when he had emerged from the pond one day and put on his sole loincloth pelt after drying himself in the sun.
A brief melancholy came over him as he thought to himself that Enkidu would love this place. The big lunk would be beside himself with Wild Born glee at the sights, smells, and sounds of a world without city. He still missed his dear friend and Right Hand. But then he smiled thinking of him running around naked like a crazy hyena and finding a most stunning beauty of voluptuousness at a drinking hole probably much like this one.

And then
he felt a chill penetrate his nerves.

He
did not see anything. It was not a noise. It was not a smell. It was an overwhelming sense of incarnation. Like something that inhabited its flesh with such superiority that it had an effect on everything near it. The sensation defied logical explanation. He had only noticed such sensation in the presence of the assembly of gods. But what god would hide itself? No, this must be a predator. Something that liked to toy with its prey before assaulting and slaughtering it.

He got up, trying to avoid the appearance of his
knowledge of the intruder, and sought out a tree branch large enough to wield as a pike or spear and small enough to break from its roots. He had no weapon, since he left his dirk and everything but his loincloth at the cave of the Scorpion couple. In the excitement of his discovery of the oasis, the thought of protection had escaped his mind.

How did I ignore such obvious shortsightedness?
He thought.
Was I enchanted? Am I under a spell?

Maybe this garden was not a paradise
of delight after all but a trap of illusionary peace intended to distract the victims with sensory pleasure, which would blind their instinct of self-preservation, making them ripe for the picking.

The loud snapping crunch of the branch breaking off in his hands echoed throughout the garden.

Whatever you are, come and get it
, thought Gilgamesh.

He may be a half-naked half—
human made of flesh, but he was a Gibbor, a mighty warrior and hunter and he could kill with skilled ferocity. He was the Wild Bull on the Rampage.

Come and get it.

But when he marched back to the pond in fighting posture, he realized it was gone. Fled.

The coward
, he mused to himself. Of course it was not necessarily a coward, but such was the kind of thinking that poured through the mind of a warrior when all his senses became flooded with preparation for battle. It was like he became a different person, from prey to predator, from victim to victor.

He bellowed with a mighty warrior cry, “I AM GILGAMESH, MIGHTY SCION OF URUK!”

It was the shout of an alpha male claiming his superiority and ownership of territory. It was an instinctual reaction.

And it could very well cost him his life.

The one thing he had over whatever it was that was hunting him was his anonymity. The thing did not know his identity or his experience triumphing over giants and monsters. It did not know that Gilgamesh was half man and half god. If this thing was sentient with human or godlike intelligence, Gilgamesh had just given away his secret. He had spilled the porridge like an adolescent boy.

Son of Ishtar
, he cursed to himself.
Why did I not just tell it how to defeat me while I was at it? Oh, and you can find me sleeping naked without my guardian Ninurta between the hours of midnight and dawn.

He hit himself in the head and muttered, “Moron.”

He had to move on. And he had leave
now
. He took the time to rub the tree branch on a rough rock to scrape a point into both ends of his newly acquired javelin.

While I am at it
, he thought,
I might as well make two
.

So he made two sharply pointed javelins.
No more surrendering to the blindness of pleasure and the ignorance of illusory security. He would go nowhere anymore without some form of defense.

He left the garden refreshed and
renewed on his quest to find Noah the Distant and Faraway.

• • • • •

He
did not know where he was. The surroundings were not familiar. He had travelled many lands and seas, but he did not remember anything like where he was at this moment. The Path of the Sun seemed to play with his sense of spatial location. Maybe he was in a magical land not on any of the maps of his map makers.

What he did know was that the sound he heard was an ocean in the near distance. He tread a path
toward it. No matter where one was in the world, a coastline could help pinpoint one’s location.

But the sea that spread out before him was foreign to him as well. He wondered if this was the Southern Sea. It appeared as if the Path of the Sun may have gone under the sea and emptied him out somewhere on the Arabian coast. He could not put it all together. He thought maybe reality was as contradictory as the mythology of it was.

His attention was taken by the appearance of a large dwelling just south of
his position on the beach.

He knew his next destination.

By the time he arrived at the structure he had surmised that it was a tavern. Of all the luck in the world! Gilgamesh had not had a good barley beer in ages. He hoped that they were heavily stocked with dark bitter beer, his favorite. He was salivating just thinking about it.

But the
door was barred shut. The tavern was locked down and boarded as if it was under siege. Where was the tavern keeper? Was it abandoned? Had he stumbled upon the equivalent of an illusory oasis in the desert only to die from a thirst for beer?

“Ho, hurrah!” He shouted. “Is anyone home?”

Funny
, he thought,
how much of Enkidu I have absorbed into my own soul
.

“I say again, is there anyone there?”

“Go away!” came a voice from above on the roof.

He looked up and saw a woman’s veiled face peering down at him.

“And who might you be, my lady?” said Gilgamesh.

“I know w
ho you are, Gilgamesh the hunter,” she shouted back. “Slayer of wild bulls you are!”

Gilgamesh was taken aback. “How do you know my name?” he asked.

She ignored his question. “You made straight for my gate,” she yelled.

And then it hit him. His eyes lit up with recognition and a slight smile even pursed his lips.

“Was that you in the garden?” he asked her. “Were you the one spying on me?”

“I am Shiduri the ale-wife
of this tavern, and I do not countenance troublemakers!”

“
Well, Shiduri, the ale-wife, you did not answer my question,” he said with a lighthearted amusement. “Are you a peeping ale-wife, getting your jollies watching kings swim in the nude?” His words were more of a tease than an accusation.

“You are a king?” she asked. Now, she
was the one confused.

“King Gilgamesh in all his
naked glory,” he sported. “Would you like me to take off my loincloth so you can know for sure, since you are evidently familiar with my most intimate of body parts.”

“I
was not peeping on you,” she complained, trying to defend herself.

“Did you like what you
saw?” he said. “I take it you are a respectable woman, due to the veil, or is that a disguise you wear when peeping?”

It was true.
Women who frequented taverns and ale houses were usually prostitutes and slaves and they were forbidden the veil in such places. Only virtuous women wore them.

“I was not peeping!” she shouted back indignantly.
She then showed her own bow with arrow drawn and aimed at him. “And for your information, I could have killed you where you lay. I am not afraid to defend myself and have done so on occasion.”

Gilgamesh laughed with genuine amusement.
He threw his spears aside and opened his hands wide as a gesture of diplomacy. He could dodge any standard hunting arrow launched by a woman.

He said slyly,
“I have no doubt of your training in the art of self-defense, considering the patrons of such establishments. But I am getting weary of this exchange. Now, either you come down here and unbar your door with traditional kindness to a stranger, or I will kick it in and take my fill. It is your choice.”

He listened for her response. But he
could not see her little head poking out from the rooftop anymore. She was hiding.

“Shiduri?” he shouted. “
My patience is…”

His shout was interrupted by the sound of the door being unbarred from within. He sighed with eager anticipation of his long overdue
imbibing of lager.

The door creaked open and Shiduri stood timidly in the crack of an opening.

“Forgive my impertinence, King Gilgamesh,” she offered. “Surely you respect my caution.”

“Impertinence forgiven,” said Gilgamesh. “You have nothing to fear from me
, Shiduri. All I really want from you is your list of brews available for consumption.”

After he had an assortment of spirits dark and light sloshing in his belly, Gilgamesh began to feel a little more carefree and light-headed.

Shiduri stood across from him at the bar refilling when needed and probing his
heart like the woman she was.

“
My friend Enkidu once drank a keg without nary an effect on him. He even outdid the goddess Ishtar in a drinking contest of sorts. Although I suspect she was feigning a bit. He knows how to hold his drink, that Wild Born.”

Gilgamesh’s eyes were tearing with the memory
of his loyal Right Hand and friend. But he was talking as if Enkidu was still alive. The alcohol had loosened him up and he was imbibing in the past as if it were the present.

“You two
are close,” she said.

“Closer than a wife,” he said quickly. “I
do not mean in that way,” he qualified to her smile.

“
He has a wife to die for. And he almost did when he challenged me at his wedding to her. Ah, Shamhat. Harlot turned queen. You remind me of her a little bit.”

Shiduri’s eyes went wide with surprised offense.

“The second queenly part, I mean,” he corrected himself. “Although Shamhat would never peep in on my nakedness.”

She slapped him playfully.

He grinned and boasted, “Together we cut off the head of Humbaba the Terrible, Guardian of the Great Cedar Forest. We survived the presence of the assembly of the gods. We slaughtered the Bull of Heaven and defied the goddess Ishtar, that treacherous vile snake.”

Shiduri’s eyes watered with empathy for him. She said softly, “Why is there sorrow in your heart, mighty Gilgamesh? You
r face is sunken, your cheeks are hollow, your mood wretched and wasted like one who has travelled a distant road.”

Gilgamesh stared out into oblivion. “Because my friend Enkidu, whom I love has turned to clay.”

She put her hand on his with sympathy for his loss.

“I am so sorry,” she said.

He continued, “I did not give him up for burial. For six days and seven nights, I wept over him. I reminisced with his corpse until a maggot fell out of his nose. It was too much for me to bear. So I went mad and roamed the wild. But not because of my mourning for him. It was mourning for me. Because I shall too soon be like him. I will also lie down, never to rise again through all eternity.”

In that moment, it all came clear to Shiduri. His following of the Path of the Sun, his crisis of meaning and confrontation with death. His craving for immortality.

“You are searching for Noah ben Lamech.” she said.

He glanced up at her through his bleary eyes
. He half whispered as if in the presence of the holy, “Ale wife, do you know the road to Noah ben Lamech?”

She said nothing. She searched his eyes.

He was impatient. “What is the landmark? Do you know the landmark? Give it to me, please, Shiduri. I will cross the ocean if need be. I will face death itself.”

Shiduri spoke with wisdom, “You will cross the ocean if you seek Noah ben Lamech. But since days of old,
none has ever done so. The crossing is perilous.”

Gilgamesh was all ears now. He had reverted to the kind of listening he had engaged in when traveling the Path of the Sun through the Underworld of Sheol.

“And then there are the Waters of Death,” she said ominously.

He
did not care about any danger. He had already faced death a hundred times.

He looked deep into her eyes and said, “I have nothing else to live for.”

Without ceremony, she said simply, “Down the shore, you will find Urshanabi the boatman of Noah ben Lamech. He will take you to him across the waters.”

Gilgamesh
continued staring into her eyes.

She added, “But beware the Stone Ones.”

Stone Ones?
He thought. But the moment was too holy to ruin with a stupid question like ‘who are the Stone Ones?’ So he chose instead to embrace the sacredness.

“Are you a goddess?”
he asked. He remembered how he had sensed her presence in the garden and was sure it was not human. Was this a goddess of wisdom who graced his presence?

But she
did not answer him.

Instead, she slowly moved around the bar to stand above his stooped over seated figure.
She pulled his face up to meet hers.

She whispered to him, “
Death is your destination, Gilgamesh. Play the day, dance the evening. Enjoy your family. That is all you can have.”

She
kissed him.

Passionately.

Deeply.

They
drank each other in.